


Paracosm

by orphan_account



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, divorced!yutae, umm dont read bc Im not done with it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8868031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: We met in a dream; we parted in reality.for the prompt:Sicheng can get into people's dreams, but the day he gets into Jaehyun's dream, he is unable to get out.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [NCTprompts_III](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/NCTprompts_III) collection. 



> **prompt:** Sicheng can get into people's dreams, but the day he gets into Jaehyun's dream, he is unable to get out.
> 
> i was on writing hiatus because i was ~~lazy~~ busy. thank you for being so patient with me and also to those who listened to me rant about this fic: this is for you  <3
> 
> there'll be plenty of warnings once i'm finished with this, i hope you like it!

Evening is the time of the day when Taeyong manages to grab some minutes to rake the hospital hallways and animatedly point at _anyone_ he catches in a blue scrub, so that they may get him food for his tired body and empty stomach, (“is there anything in particular you want Dr. Lee?” “Just. Get. Food.”) after which he meanders to the door to Doyoung’s clinic to listen to him berate in a thousand ways the same old story of how he shouldn’t be running a clinic when his tolerance for children faking measles has now thinned to hair width.

Taeyong might admit that he stops by only to throw the bag of takeout at Doyoung’s face to conspicuously rile him up when he begins to overly gesticulate and get carried away with ranting about how much he wants his previous job back. In some way, Doyoung has developed a reflex for it, catching Taeyong’s kinetic plastic bag halfway and peeking inside while his friend crams down the bagels he’d collected in his palm all in one go.

“You should take that off,” Doyoung says, pulling a bagel for himself and pointing to the ring on Taeyong’s finger after noshing it.

It’s almost dramatic, how Taeyong’s gaze falls onto his lap and turns solemn as he forgets about everything around him. In that moment it’s only the ring he’s looking at, and Doyoung knows there’s only one person he’s thinking about.

It’s a silent moment, one of very many in which Taeyong looks at the gold band with eyes that tell Doyoung that he’s still reminiscing the story he should’ve long burned from his book and it’s enough to make Doyoung regret pointing it out to him. But then, the regret is short lived. As a friend, Doyoung knows it’s more important to help Taeyong out of that mental loop of the week he had signed his divorce papers in.

Years of Taeyong saying 'it’s all okay' have been the same years Doyoung has dealt with Taeyong’s lies.

“I will,” Taeyong mumbles, voice fading and eventually overlapped by Doyoung’s own voracious chomping before he picks up volume, aiming to cover his own discomfort at the shudders of repressed nostalgia, “Can’t have that while operating, I know. I always kick it off beforehand, so don’t stress about it.”

“Taeyong, that’s not _why_ I think you should take it off.”

Doyoung’s tone is beseeching, even the walls and the table know what Doyoung is trying to say to him. Anger runs up Taeyong’s head because everyone acts like they know what’s best for his situation, as if they know how hard it is—Taeyong’s not unapprehensive of pity and empathy, but he refuses to take it when it’s directed at himself—because he doesn’t need it.

He pushes the door with his shoulders as he storms out, leaving a sighing Doyoung who wonders when Taeyong would come to terms with his tribulation.

Doyoung wonders when Taeyong would let it go.

 

 

  
According to Sicheng’s expert ideology; climbing up means cliffs and cliffs mean suicide.

Still, he hadn’t pegged Yuta to be the type to drag him up mother nature’s domain meant for thrill seeking terra irma lovers and not two human beings lacking of the sort of interest; especially when Sicheng himself is neither overly fond of nature, nor heights in particular.

But he’s younger to Yuta and strangely trusts him despite the clamorous thundering of his heart which is his body’s response to the increasing physical proximity to the cliff’s edge as he's blindly following Yuta’s lead.

The monstrosity of a hike ends as soon as Yuta stands triumphantly on the edge, Sicheng thinks it’s most appropriate to do a runner while Yuta busily relives a Simba moment, staring at the russety skies. He stops there, right where the tip of his foot is threatening to slide over and beyond solid ground, to where the water fall descends what seems like kilometres of drop.

Bile spikes up Sicheng’s throat at the sight which would look beautiful in photography magazines but he knows he shouldn’t be here, afraid of heights as he already is. He climbs up the last of the rocky lands to stand beside Yuta with an arm ready to grab him lest he should fall.

The water soars, the linings of the city are now a distant and minuscule sight, even from this extreme height. Yuta’s mouth widens with his glistening teeth being put once more on display, as he takes in the view from up there. Meanwhile, Sicheng turns green at the mere thought of having to look down where the waterfall regains linkage with the ground.

Yuta is overtly elated, Sicheng can see that view like this make him happy but he can’t stand three more minutes at a height like this. He pokes a feeble finger on Yuta’s shoulder, it takes two or three jabs before he collars Yuta’s attention.

“I’m not feeling very well Yu-ge…can we go?”

“We’ll go when we have to go,” Yuta chides and Sicheng frowns for two reasons— one being that he’s not getting home any time soon and the second being that Yuta has something up in his mind.

Quickly revisiting his previous theory, Sicheng scoffs because Yuta wouldn’t bring him all the way up here to make him witness suicide, that was bollocks. Someone as sane and a living ball of the world’s collective optimism as _Yuta_ couldn’t _possibly_ ever do that.

Yet Yuta’s lips purse, eyes flickering over the scenery before him over the falling water and then to the running river below him. His legs are shaking, but not with fear, something else entirely.

Yuta says only one word, conversely the implications his tone held were more than one to Sicheng.

“Watch.”

In a flash of a second, Yuta dives headlong over the cliff.

 

 

  
The symmetry of hospitals in themselves are poison to the eyes once you’ve roamed enough. A few rounds around the corner, looking at tiles that probably have the same dye stains, hallways that seem to have the same visitors lurking around sending in different people to question doctors despite only one having been allocated to do so because the urge to know is frantic, the colours, the smell of alcohol rub plunging into the nose—everything seems ditto across different floors.

Needless to say, for Taeyong, who’s on duty round the clock, it’s migraine-inducing.

His phone rings, he picks it up at once, stepping down to the ground floor at an angle evading visibility to ‘the boss’s (as he likes to call Youngho, the senior consultant) office since cellphones may only be required to be on silent in the theatre hall but it’s still an odd itch for the boss to see a doctor with one. The screen of the phone is cold against his ear as Taeyong walks past a couple of wards, the exertion from the tedious series of deliveries from hours ago still lingering as pain in his muscles.

 _“Papa!”_ comes a feeble, dear voice and it tugs a smile out of him and before he can greet his son, he hears him interrupt with his lisp prominent.

_“I’m hungry! You’ll make cheesecake right, won’t you Papa—”_

Sometimes Taeyong hates how he can sense calamity a mile away as much as he hates it when Doyoung walks out of a ward Taeyong had himself never gone into, having only been concerned with work on all floors excepting the ground floor. He’s irked, Doyoung being in the hospital meant that he’d been called and conclusively— something was wrong, especially how he scanned his eyes over the files in his hands. He’s so caught up in what he’s seeing, that he forgets that he should be listening to David.

_“Papa will you come home already?”_

Taeyong’s hands clench around his phone with force enough to break it as his eyes meet Doyoung’s indistinct gaze.

“Papa will be working tonight, David. I’m sorry—I have to go now okay? I love you,” he says hurriedly and his nerves hurt as Doyoung approaches him large envelopes gripped between his fingers.

_“Okay.”_

How Taeyong hates the dejection in David’s voice.

_I’m sorry._

Doyoung walks up to him when he stuffs his phone into his pocket, he sees the inquisition in Taeyong and promptly begins responsively, “Youngho called me. Don’t go around looking like I’m trying to steal away your spotlight, my days are over.”

However Taeyong isn’t paying attention to the overtoned insult or his crude humour, his fingers feel prickly as he takes the report on the patient that was in the ward Doyoung had just stepped right out of.

‘Youngho called me’ rings in his ears as the pounding of his heart follows after.

Taeyong gulps.

 _Youngho only calls you when something is terribly wrong_.

Doyoung sighs, stuffing hands into his pockets, unaware of his friend’s warning alarms blaring. Taeyong’s eyes fly over to his wristwatch. 11:37.

Minutes pass with him gesturing Taeyong to walk towards the patient’s room. Taeyong has no reason to go over and look into a patient he hasn’t been assigned but his legs seem to have renounced the control of his mind.

_11:39…40…_

_I should be with David._

He thinks about his three year old son and about all of the nights he hasn’t been able to meet him along with his cursed luck that the hospital is too far away from his house. He sucks at being a parent, and without a doubt David knows that as well. Maybe it’s partly because he has to do his uninterrupted string of operations day and night or maybe he’s a chronic workaholic, just like the present moment is proving him to be—because he’s willing to assist Doyoung even when it’s clearly none of his business; instead of going home to his son.

“We ran a couple of minor scans and anything further requires consent but we’re unable to find any kin to do that so he’s been kept for, well…” Doyoung starts, but his words dissipate as he finds himself in scarcity of ways to explain the anomaly of a patient he’s been assigned, “I don’t know how to describe it.”

Taeyong takes his silence for hesitancy. Letting out an irate exhale, he acquiesces, “I’ll look into it. Don’t you worry.”

His tone is the same he used to speak in when saving Doyoung’s ass during dissection classes in med school, when Doyoung was lost enough to get a huge drop in his grades but Taeyong notices Doyoung’s reaction isn’t the same as it was back then. He watches as Doyoung’s arms hang uselessly by his sides but his eyes flare up contrastingly.

Doyoung pushes the door in, “Brace yourself.”

 

 

  
“Watch,” Yuta says and how Sicheng wishes to tell him how difficult it is to keep his shivering eyelids open. His muscles are responding to his acrophobia. But the moment Sicheng does manage to have the pluck to look fully at the marvels of nature around him, he notices Yuta’s feet inching towards the edge.

Closer, closer, even closer and then, in a nanosecond, _gone._

 _“No!”_ he shrieks but his scream falls short because the next second passes after Yuta has jumped. Sicheng’s screech echoes all around him. This isn’t the time to be intrepid, and jump right after Yuta but he’s frozen as if the air dropped to subzero, his muscles paralysed as they try to register what just happened before his eyes.

One moment Yuta was standing on the edge and the next he wasn’t.

Nakamoto Yuta had jumped. With no hint of compunction about what he was about do to Sicheng on his face—only pure mirth.

Nakamoto Yuta had jumped. Off the cliff...from a height that was destined to kill.

Nakamoto Yuta had jumped.

Sicheng thinks of nothing but how preposterous it was, to be the one to have watched your best friend kill yourself and having done nothing to save him, having been incapable of saving him.

_Was he out of his mind?_

Sicheng immediately falls to his knees, he can’t simply stand there and watch the horror unfold before his eyes as his Yuta is now hurling to crash into rocks metres below. Sicheng’s knuckles, tight on the edge of the cliff turn white with his heart leaping to his throat as he reaches out to catch with a desperate hand extended but there’s nothing to catch.

He sees no Yuta, no image human being falling down—nothing at all.

_H-How...?_

Sicheng squints his eyes, helplessly trying to look at where Yuta could have landed—anything at all but there’s no splash in the water, the air is still as if no one ever touched a single leaf on the looming weeds.

Then he hears it.

A voice, clear with slivers of laughter and a Japanese accent—he hears him.

“Behind you.”

Sicheng’s head snaps to look exactly there.

His heart thuds loud in disbelief and his eyes are too blurry to see until the tears of relief fall to let his vision clear and he sees Yuta with his trademark grin, with arms crossed and expression mischievous—standing right behind him. Sicheng gapes for words, before yapping a loud ‘fuck you’ and running into his arms, crying like a kindergarten kid returning home after his first day at school. Yuta helps him up, dabbing a handkerchief to his tears, “Guess I freaked you out huh? Sorry.”

There’s a chant iterating in Sicheng’s mind, it’s not possible…it’s not possible.

Sicheng hugs him, burying his face in his chest as he cries out with a voice cracked as much as a goat’s, “What was that?”

Yuta laughs and it’s so unique that Sicheng knows it’s confirmation enough that none of this had been him dreaming.

“It was cool, right?” Yuta asks with a proud smile and Sicheng feels that laughter in his chest against his face. He hugs his Yu-ge tighter and Yuta ruffles his hair before smoothing his hand down Sicheng’s back to steady him.

“Do not _ever_ do that again,” the younger grumbles and somewhere in Yuta’s voice and comforting pat, he calms down. For a moment Sicheng thought he’d been dreaming but Yuta was warm and his laughter irreplaceable.

It’s real.

His Yu-ge just jumped over a cliff and came back as if he’d never stepped closer to the edge at all. This wasn’t him under a psychopathic drug or some airborne hallucinogen—it was fucking real and Sicheng saw it happen. More than the relief that he’s alive, Sicheng is curious to know how he’d managed to do something as unfathomable as that so he peers up and asks Yuta right there.

“Magic,” Yuta giggles out as an explanation but Sicheng knows better than to take that as an answer.

Had Yuta said this to him ten years ago, he would’ve believed him but Sicheng is not seven, he’s seventeen, and at seventeen you’ve questioned and debated enough to not let yourself believe in fickle things like magic.

Yuta, finds himself having a hard time explaining to him that it’s a special ability, seamless and Yuta can call it at command through himself, use it as much as he likes and go anywhere, travel to wherever he wishes in an instant—if this can’t be called magic, Yuta has no other name for it.

“Teleportation,” Sicheng admonishes with a mouthful of dimsums once they’re on the train back to Wanzhou and Yuta makes a face before accepting the term. Since Sicheng is more than happy to hear him describe this ‘power’, they spend the train ride talking about it.

“What about me? Will I get powers like you did?” Sicheng asks him making Yuta hum in thought before grinning.

 _“Everyone_ has powers already. I won’t know if you didn’t get lucky enough to express them.”

That seemed hard to believe but it was only a vague, passing thought back then.

 

 

  
“I don’t understand why a comatose patient would be considered as a code red situation by Youngho. He should understand you have better things to do—” Taeyong starts, it’s only him and Doyoung in the room, he doesn’t have to worry about libelling Youngho and risk getting heard. Not that Youngho would mind in the first place.

Taeyong stops when Doyoung mutely stares at the patient. He’s young, Taeyong can see, about eighteen or nineteen years old as he can make an educated guess.

“Given his condition, he would’ve called you actually,” Doyoung murmurs with a point of his finger and Taeyong looks at the boy on the bed, notices his skin so pale it seemed snowy and eyes shut tight. The boy’s hair is bronze, his features pleasant. They remind Taeyong of David.

Dr. Lee Taeyong failed to see what was so untypical about this particular patient in a coma.

“But he called me because he suspected something was weird,” Doyoung says.

“He called you because of your ability—I mean _that,_ right?” Taeyong butts in, voice lined with impatience because there’s nothing wrong with the patient right before them and if there is, he can’t see what.

Doyoung knows Taeyong is referring to his mutation, (which in fact isn’t a mutation but he can’t convince Taeyong to call it otherwise until now) it’s often he who ends up being Youngho’s last hope in identifying what’s wrong with a patient even though his ability does nothing but give him a pathway into tapping into the emotions of the patients. It all started when he woke up one morning, nudged Taeyong and instantly guessed that he was mad at something. Ever since, he could draw other’s emotions into himself by physical contact. It’s weird but he’s learnt to live with it—this ‘ability’.

“So?” Taeyong asks brazenly, “What do you think he’s feeling?”

Doyoung stands irresolute, uncertainty dancing in his eyes so Taeyong raises an annoyed eyebrow and takes a seat.

“He was rushed in last year,” Doyoung starts, “by some neighbour of his if I remember correctly—there was minor tissue damage in the head, nothing serious but he stopped responding a day after he was admitted.”

Taeyong looks at the floor, arms crossed. “MRI?”

“Clean. Nothing at all.”

“Impossible,” Taeyong expresses, arms tightened as he looks at the boy on the bed who’s oblivious to the discussion about him. Coma would definitely have a source that could have been detected by the scan. It had to.

“I thought the same,” Doyoung says distractedly, gaze drifting towards the boy, “That was conducted recently though, back then nothing was done except treat him like other unconscious patients.”

“Let’s just get to the point, what is wrong with him? Why can’t you just leave him to wake up by himself—what is so wrong that Youngho had to bother you?”

Doyoung is quieter than usual, searching for ways to answer him. Taeyong holds his breath ready to let it go in exasperation is Doyoung makes him wait any more.

He let’s his breath go out when Doyoung parts his frown to speak, “He’s in a coma.”

Taeyong sighs, his shoulders growing more restive by the minute so he leans back in his chair, “That I can see, Doyoung.”

Doyoung stares at him blankly, his expression horrified and his words almost a dead whisper,  
“He’s not supposed to be in a coma.”

“Uh…as doctors we want to get him out of said coma so I must agree with you though I don’t usually—”

“Taeyong, medically, logically, actually—he isn’t fucking supposed to be in a coma! Take a look at the EEG readings.”

Driven by Doyoung’s hysterically raised voice, Taeyong does. He’s led to suspect that this might be a mistake though a mistaken report can’t happen, he diagnoses the state of his brain activity.

_Impossible. His mind is working just as a normal awake person’s does._

Taeyong gawks at Doyoung, made speechless by the papers in his hands, “He’s…”

Doyoung moves to the corner of the room to grab the ends of a table with both his hands, letting his head hang low, “What sort of coma is this when his brain is fully functional?”

 

 

  
It’s the morning of his eighteenth birthday.

Sicheng’s state is groggy not to mention his vision doesn’t work that well either. A hesitant and unwilling hand creeps out from under his blanket to push the side table for leverage so that he may get up to brave another school day with lessons he loathed. He dresses up, showers because he remembers he has to shower after he’s already put his uniform on and he feels like a klutz probably is one but it isn’t the first time he’s been dysfunctional in the mornings. It’s normal like every other day, turning eighteen isn’t a milestone, there’s nothing different except the bag of cells in his brain turning a year older and Sicheng isn’t expecting anything different.

It’s the morning of his eighteenth birthday; and that is when the voices begin.

Sicheng falls to his knees, holding his head with as much pressure as he can.

_What is happening to me?_

There are sounds—words in his head that sound like human voices, loudening and fading in a cacophony in the expanse of his mind. They don’t stop. He tries telling them to stop but in vain.

Sicheng hears _everything._

He tries clamping his hands over his forehead, pressing down with as much force as he can so that the pain distracts him from hearing the voices while walking to the dining table. But he can hear his mother think about what she’s going to cook that day, his father’s grumbles in his head and it’s absurd because no one at home is speaking, they’re right there before his eyes with their lips closed and limbs occupied in some or the other work.

It isn’t hard for him to realise he’s hearing their thoughts.

Out of nowhere Yuta’s words now echo, prominent over the whirlwind of voices in his head. He tries to keep himself sane, he wants to believe he’s in an alternate reality—anything but his real home and his real life.

_‘Everyone has powers.’_

Sicheng tries to suppress the irritant voices as he swallows his rice without chewing. Luckily neither of his parents take notice, letting him run over to his bus stop. He no longer hears them once the school bus begins to move farther from his house, so he guesses this must have something to do with radius and he’s glad for a second before he hears them again.

 _The more I focus, the more I hear,_ he thinks to himself.

But then the school bus begins to flood with students and then Sicheng’s head with thoughts. Not his thoughts, he can barely tell his own thoughts apart from the million other miscellaneous words spiralling in his head.

He’s going mad with all these sounds of words which aren’t even his.

_I’m not taking that seat, Yiyang has to move…_

_…I didn’t bring my geometry notebook—I wonder if someone will lend it to me-ah! Sicheng!_

_Why is he hanging his head low?_

_What a moron…he’s probably—_

“Could you fucking stop!” Sicheng shouts and the entire bus grows silent in a split second. They stare at him with the same expression—an amalgam of disgust and shock.

Sicheng is the talk of the school throughout the day.

It’s funny because he can hear every gossip, every hushed conspiracy or whatever these people are speculating about it and all of it is literal noise inside his head. His head hits the desk and Yukhei presses a hand on his shoulder but Sicheng is agitated because he can hear his concern in his mind even before he speaks.

_I didn’t ask for this power. I didn’t ask for this ability._

_I don’t want to know what goes in people’s heads. Not like this. Not this. Anything but this._

“Sicheng—” Yukhei starts but he’s cut off before he finishes.

“Don’t. Say. _Anything,”_ Sicheng growls and Yukhei leaves him alone, wondering what sort of person he was to consider some sympathy offensive.

Sicheng doesn’t explain, because he doesn’t know how to explain what he’s feeling. They’d all take him for a madman as they already are, he doesn’t want to humiliate himself. He hides on the roof, away from people with hopes to be away from their thoughts in his head.

His eighteenth birthday—is lonely.

Lonely being there’s no one near him, just as he likes but the string of voices in his head don’t stop, they keep coming, he continuously hears what others are thinking although he doesn’t want to. He fears if he’s hearing the dead, but the dead don’t discuss about shopping lists.

The voices, all in all never make him truly feel like he’s alone, it’s eerie.

Sicheng can run, but he can’t get away from these voices because people are everywhere. The voices are everywhere. He doesn’t know where to go, so he plugs in the loudest EDM tracks on his iPod which he can find and takes a random bus home.

Yuta was Sicheng’s teacher besides his friend, since Sicheng had opted for Japanese as an elective course. He’d gone for a seminar and Sicheng had never hated his luck more than he did right now.

_Of all the days…why had my powers had to come today?_

The pouring rain and loud music seem to be efficient tranquillisers for he soon calms down. He’s sick of telling himself that it’ll be fine, he’s not prepared to live with a power he didn’t ask for.

Through a cracking phone call from a phone booth as the rain pours outside, Yuta tells him it’s his gift but Sicheng doesn’t know why he received it. He can’t keep hearing others or else his head is going to burst.

 _“I got my gift on my eighteenth birthday too. This is your gift Sicheng—you can read minds,”_ he hears Yuta say against the splatters of the rain on the ground outside the phone booth. Sicheng wishes it was a tardis so that he could go back in time and prevent himself from having this sort of power. He can’t believe he’s crying on his birthday.

Sicheng feels like he’s going to tear up in public but Yuta’s next words hold him together.

_“You can control it. Believe that you can.”_

 

 

  
About a week passes. The patient is still unconscious, he rests on his hospital bed, seemingly lifeless. The monitor beside him still spikes up activity that in no way should be that of a comatose person’s. Everything he had had been intact, his keys, clothes, belongings that he had on him while he was admitted have been tucked in the drawers adjacent to his bed. Taeyong isn’t good at remembering names so he guesses he should stop addressing him as ‘room 93’ in his head, he peeps from behind the nurse’s shoulders and notes the patients name.

_Jung Jaehyun | 18 years old—_

Before Taeyong can read more, the nurse turns around and he moves aside to not seem like a total creep. Doyoung walks in with Youngho and the nurse leaves them alone, gone with the personal records of the patient Taeyong was suddenly piqued about.

“He’s still not showing any response,” Youngho observes to himself and all Doyoung and Taeyong can do is sigh.

“It’s almost been a week,” Taeyong murmurs, he doesn’t want to start listing the amount of times they had to put Jaehyun’s heavy body on [] for scans or the amount of sleep he’s gotten trying to fix this.

“Taeyong still thinks he’s faking it,” Doyoung says sourly and Taeyong sticks his tongue out with all the petulancy left in him. With the three of them, it begins to feel like medical school again, but then Taeyong is reminded of something else and he cuts out the act, the ring on his finger burns.

“I mean, that’s one conjecture. Otherwise we’re looking at full body paralysis,” Taeyong adds and Youngho, who usually doesn’t let expressions show like the common definition of a nerdy neurosurgeon, shows the slightest of disturbance in his features.

“Negative,” Youngho repudiates with a biting tone. The other two doctors in the room have no clue what Youngho wants to do with this patient, there seems no way to wake him up, with the lack of knowledge about what condition or abnormal syndrome they’re looking at.

“Moving onto less discussion and more action,” Taeyong says, “A shock could wake him up—”

“That’s been done already,” Youngho interrupts.

“What have you not done then?” Taeyong shouts back, “We’ve worked enough. You never tell anyone what you’re gonna do, we’re the ones trying to be of help here and you’re not in the least even hinting what we’re supposed to do here, are you Chief?”

“You’re right,” Youngho agrees all of a sudden, “Days have past. We’ll leave it at that.”

 _What about the patient—I mean, Jaehyun,_ Taeyong whines in his head.

“So what you’re gonna let it go? What sort of doctors do you think we are and how can you let him be—he’s got family waiting for him for fuck’s sake!” Taeyong yells but Youngho doesn’t flinch, his omniscient face busting a nerve on Taeyong’s forehead. Doyoung only silently observes the patient laid on the bed, his finger on the back of the unconscious boy’s palm.

Youngho’s only response to Taeyong’s frustrated yell is to go over to him and sneer down.

“I didn’t say I’d abandon the patient, I meant I’ll take over. Besides, he has no family to return to,” these words should have been relief to Taeyong but he doesn’t know why he wants to work a bit more.

_‘You work a lot babe. But at the end I’ll be proud of you so I don’t mind you being away from me…as long as you stay—’_

Taeyong shouldn’t remember his voice at a random time like this. Moreover for all the time that has past, he shouldn’t have been affected by it. Because it’s been long, he’s got to keep everything personal aside but those words, that voice keeps echoing and echoing until Youngho’s stern tone booms loud enough to bring Taeyong back from the heartbreaking flashback.

He feels a large hand on his shoulder, not realising he had to his strained eyes pained red to look at Youngho.

_I probably have slept like, six hours. In this goddamn week._

“Go home Taeyong. You need rest,” Youngho says with that pity in his eyes that Taeyong holds contemptible, and leaves without hearing a word more.

 

 

 

It’s a slow road from irritation due to his powers to actually being able to bring peace to his mind. Sicheng finds the most untroubled times of the day the dawn and dusk because that’s when he sees less people, and the less people he sees, the less he unintentionally focuses on them, keeping his head clear of unwanted voices.

Mind reading. A special ability.

It’s an ad hoc thing, he learns. You can have powers when you believe in them. Sicheng likes to think powers are going to stick to you like a leech whether you like it or not. It’s unavoidable, you can’t suppress them—they’re a trait bound to express itself. _What you can try to do, is control it,_ like Yuta had pointed it out.

So every morning, each of the steps of his jog are matched with his consciousness going to places. He learns to see what others see, without physically being there, he learns how to know not only what others are thinking but also what moments they’re having.

Often he feels the burden of other’s emotions, he feels the joy of a six year old on receiving the ferret that she’s always wanted, his mother’s frustration directed at her chores in the morning and in phases, he teaches himself to control how much of detail he should take.

He didn’t sign up for additional empathy but how much he feels is by his own free will. He realises the need to manipulate this power or whatever. Sometimes he wonders what it’s actually called, if there a mutation of some sorts in him. But no one seems to talk about it, no one points it out and it makes complete sense as to why—it’s superstitious. Besides, history has given a brutal picture of what happened to those who claimed to have a slight inflection from the normal abilities.

You can’t call it magic, no one’s making potions; you can’t call it special skill, it’s not something that’s honed overtime.

Since Sicheng’s power is more of an extended perception, a way to and through other’s minds—he calls it the seventh sense.

 

 

Besides his own unnecessarily large house in the outskirts of Seoul, Taeyong has an apartment as well that’s barely a walk from the hospital premises. He stays there when he has to—which is often considering the amount of shifts he has at odd hours followed by breaks that seem to have varying degrees of length each working day.

Collapsing on the couch Taeyong closes his eyes to the neatness of his surroundings; his apartment is clean without a dust like always and lavish. He likes it that way, it also features an extra bedroom incase Doyoung decides to stop by sometimes.

A sigh leaves Taeyong without him realising it.

Youngho might have asked him to go home but his schedule is already set therefore he has to work. He can take leaves, he knows Youngho will grant those in a blink of an eye but he needs to finish his quota of night shifts of this year. Trying to diagnose Jung Jaehyun had taken up most of his time anyway. The weeks been futile and insulting to him as a doctor.

It’s the first time in his career that he hasn’t been able to diagnose a patient successfully.

With an interruption courtesy of his notification tune that echoes ‘whoop whoop’ continuously enough for Taeyong to grab hold of his phone despite his habit to ignore it. Taeyong is only pressing the volume lower button hard when he sees the latest text.

 **kim dongyoung:** don’t mute your phone i hate you

Not surprising at all, Taeyong reflects for a moment, pushing other notifications down and reading them one by one. Doyoung isn’t the kind to text anyone let alone him.

 **kim dongyoung:** you can sit in your office i talked to younghoe

 **kim dongyoung:** *youngho

 **kim dongyoung:** on second thought he’s a hoe

Taeyong giggles at that one. It’s nice to have one friend from high school around. In Doyoung’s eyes, everything is as he was fifteen, Taeyong likes having someone who let’s him forget about his divorce for once. Doyoung hasn’t brought up that topic yet there’s a part of him that wants to talk about it. He absently scrolls through the rest of the messages.

 **kim dongyoung:** you’re allowed to sit in your office but no working

 **kim dongyoung:** are you even getting these? bc youngho should understand that i am not communication media for you two use a fucking pigeon

Taeyong blinks his eyes at the last text that lies underneath his fingertips. He expands it, drops his phone after seeing it and then leaves to prep food for breakfast.

 **kim dongyoung:** i know we’re ‘off the case’ but i got a file. and a couple of more files…uh boxes actually. look into them when youre okay with everything

Frankly, Taeyong doesn't know when he'll be okay with everything.

It's time to take a break, he realises.

 

 

 

Sicheng’s cajoled into learning traditional dance not long after he unravels his ability. It seemed a setback, since Sicheng wanted nothing to do with people in the morning, he knew what every second person thought of him and that didn’t make them an appealing candidate for socialization. Regardless, he stuck to his old friends—even Yukhei seemed to stick to him despite his occasional bursts of wrath and Sicheng adored him for it. Yuta was on and off due to his job and where he went, Sicheng would never know.

“Breakup issues. I like to take long drives,” Yuta would say before taking a swig from the end of his cigarette.

Sicheng never understood why. “But your last relationship was years ago,” he would say and he knew Yuta would only smile a smile meant to deceive.

“Time makes things worse,” was the only loose reply Sicheng would get and he understood Yuta didn’t want to tell him more.

 _Everyone has their own secrets,_ Sicheng thinks as Yuta lies down on the roof beside him on a night before he leaves for Beijing with his eyes open to drink in the stars above. Sicheng may not know a lot about Yuta, abstaining from reading his mind because it always felt like a breach of trust, but he does know that if there’s anyone who knows how to avoid a problem to such an extent that they pretend it never existed—it’s Yuta.

Sicheng snorts and plays with the hem of his jacket, cold stings of nightly breeze tinting his cheeks pink.

_And everyone should be left to deal with their secrets alone, I don’t see how this is any of my business._

Yuta closes his eyes noticeably. Sicheng looks over his shoulder to his peaceful sleeping face wondering whether he’s already sleep. There’s a little hint of a frown on his forehead and his brows are pinched enough to signal that some sudden memory had bothered him. He dares not go into Yuta’s mind to know what he’s thinking. After weeks of uninvited information floating in the meatspace of his brain, Sicheng has nothing but deceased curiosity left in him.

“Sicheng?” Yuta pipes up, eyes flying open.

He turns to the elder with folded legs, “Yeah?”

Yuta’s lips are pursed, his expression calculating. It’s like he’s going over a phrase in his mind which he doesn’t want to say. Sicheng holds back the temptation to read him and know beforehand so he holds his breath.

“You ever fell in love?” Yuta asks, a question astray from anything Sicheng had expected him to say.

“No...?” he croaks out and Yuta gets up to smile at him sadly.

“Good,” Yuta says, ruffling his hair and Sicheng who has his brows creased, is in a heartbeat asking, “Why is that ‘good’?”

A sharp sting runs up Sicheng’s spine because his question doesn’t mollify Yuta, instead it turns him even duller, shoulders drooping with an accompaniment of a sigh.

“Look into my head,” he says, and at Sicheng is taken aback by his request.

_Look into my head—see all that I’ve suffered because I fell in love._

“I-I don’t think I should Yu-ge,” he stutters but Yuta’s fierce eyes make him obey.

So he does.

Sicheng doesn’t recover from having seen the pain, the transient happiness from Yuta’s mind—the heartbreak of love he saw in Yuta’s memories, for days. He had ventured into a territory of Yuta’s mind, a place his teacher had never told him of but to see it all in a flash; he understood what Yuta was trying to teach him through it.

_Keep the word ‘love’ scratched for you own good._

Sicheng knew Yuta was married and yet he was here, in Wanzhou as a foreign language instructor—alone. He didn’t question the reasons, rather choosing to keep silent. Noticeably, there has never been a wedding ring on Yuta’s finger.

Now Sicheng knows why.

 

 

  
Sometimes Taeyong wonders if there’s any guilt eating at Yuta. If there’s anything he feels about all that happened five years ago. If he regrets leaving Taeyong all alone, if he ever even thinks about David; but who’s he fooling, the guilt is all Taeyong’s and should be all his. Taeyong was the one with the mistakes, because the one person who had stayed and loved him was the one he would never see again.

Right after the divisive ink hit the divorce papers, Yuta hadn’t even turned to look at him. Taeyong was relieved he hadn’t at that time, both knew the mistake was his but Taeyong felt it was justified that Yuta never forgave him.

After all, Taeyong didn’t deserve the forgiveness he couldn’t even beg for.

So, five long years had gone that way. New born David was given to Taeyong’s welcoming arms and he had cried tears.

Tears—those of joy of a new life in his arms mixed with those of devastation of losing the opportunity to share that joy with the only person in the world he wanted to share it with.

This lesson is why he works with redoubled effort, each day at work he sees family waiting and praying outside in the waiting hall, their looks of anxiousness followed by the looks of happiness when they get to see their loved ones. Of course, Taeyong knows he needs therapy but no one has the time for it.

Love.

It’s a kind of happiness he’d lost himself, so he doesn’t want anyone else to lose.

His job keeps him going on even though he stops to think it as futile because Yuta isn’t there with him, he won’t come back and who is Taeyong to change the decisions he himself gave rise to.

He realises no point in living a life without Yuta. Yet, five years have passed since he has a son.

Their son.

Now Taeyong’s making calls, trying to find out what’s wrong with Jung Jaehyun so that it may steer him away from getting depressed again. Jung Jaehyun, who’s been stuck unconscious in this room and showing and not showing signs of activity. Taeyong brainstorms, reads till he can’t see the words on page linear anymore—thinks because the eighteen year old kid must have someone waiting for him at home, someone worried, someone who loved him.

Youngho’s voice sirens in his head.

_‘…Besides, he has no family to return to.’_

After weeks of hiatus, something clicks. He knows clearly what he’s concluded after so much time expended on this. There’s only one thing on his mind.

_It’s got to be Jaehyun’s ability._

 

 

  
Often after common evenings spent in sky gazing, Yuta leaves for his house and Sicheng goes home as well, thinking about another day that would pain his mind tomorrow. He never sleeps at night, it’s something he’s taught himself in interest of preservation of his sanity because nights are the only time he can work in peace. Mornings mean he’s around people which means he'll find himself disturbed by every passing individual's thoughts bombarding into his head.

Night is when he skims through science textbooks and commits the mortal sin of using Google translate to look through various papers he finds on anything that has to do with mind reading. Most of it is related to psychic abilities and nonsense, he often gets frustrated with himself, trying to find out why he's like this with a view to liberating himself of this ability.

One night after staying late at the library late, he realises he had left his notepad full of his scribbles about different ‘seventh senses’ in the dance room. He gulps at the possibility of anyone reading through it. There’s an awful lot of Korean recipes on that as well, but it’s really the notes he’s worried about as he bikes through the teeth shattering winter winds to get to his Chinese dance class.

The window belonging to his practice room is the only one lit up, as he notices from the outside. Must be the teacher cleaning up, he wonders and climbs up.

A slight push of the door makes him aware of music playing in the practice room along with the rhythmic slams of feet on the flooring. Someone’s practicing at the dead of the night huh, Sicheng doesn't mean to disturb, he quietly opens the door from where he can see his notebook right diagonal to him but he steps in to find Cheng Xiao dancing.

He freezes.

It's not just that Cheng Xiao was dancing but what froze him was that dancing around her were trickles of water, swaying along with her every move. The droplets seem to be suspended in mid air and Sicheng doesn't have to think twice that it was Cheng Xiao herself that was making the water dance that way.

She has her eyes closed and the water is framing her every move, she renders them transportable—it’s spellbinding to watch. So much that Sicheng forgets about his notebook for the brief moment he realises people could have a beautiful seventh sense like she did.

Cheng Xiao catches him looking and the water hits the floor in a splash.

Sicheng stammers at her astounded expression.

“Erm…I came to take my notebook so uh—you can continue. I’m going bye,” he says hurriedly walking to grab said object and running for the door.

Cheng Xiao stands still and worried, “Don't tell anyone please.” Sicheng understands how she’s feeling. Abilities are a secret, should be a secret.

“It's okay,” he says comfortingly, “You're not the first person I know who can do stuff—that kinda stuff.”

Her eyes brighten with a anxious tinge, “Can you?”

“Oh no! Not that thing with the water—that was so cool…my power is pretty boring; I read minds,” Sicheng finishes with an awkward laugh and for he manages to get a relieved smile out of her, he’s happy.

“That might not be all,” she’s quick to add before she offers to drive him home. Sicheng accepts but doesn't quite understand what she meant until she explains on the ride back.

“Earlier I thought I could only change the shape of water, make it dance around but I focused more— _water is mine_ so in time I found I could do this,” she says, water appearing into her hand and becoming ice before she throws it up in the air leaving Sicheng watching in awe as the crystal vaporises and disappears from around her fingers.

“You should look more, could be more than just mind reading to it,” she tells him before he mumbles his thanks and waves her goodbye.

He takes her advice and tries to sleep at night, but instead he ends up focusing and focusing, until he finds his vision extending beyond the walls of the room. Then to the streets and then he crosses a familiar wall. Yukhei's house. _This is his house..._ and sees his friend sleeping soundly and before he knows it, he finds himself going closer and closer until he's enveloped in another universe.

Sicheng wakes up with a shock in the next morning. _Where was I?_

He eats the poorly wrapped sushi that Yuta had made for him at school while Yukhei began to blabber about how final year sucked balls. Sicheng is a good listener but he flicks his forehead before deadpanning, “Say Yukhei..did you dream about goats last night?”

Yukhei swallows the sushi without chewing.

“How did you know?”

 

 

  
“Files,” Taeyong demands into his phone. Doyoung smoothly answers back.

_“I’ll send them over to your apartment. They’ll be there in an hour.”_

“Okay.”

Within an hour, the box arrives. Taeyong pulls out the records and papers relating to Jung Jaehyun, flipping them over and trying to figure out what his power could be. If his ability is the one that is causing him to behave this way, there was nothing he could do.

Science can’t explain the supernatural. Especially when everyone regards these individual abilities as hoax.

Taeyong goes back to reading.

                 Jung Jaehyun…18 years old…

“He started showing these readings since December 16th…” Taeyong speaks to himself, focused deeply in the papers but then realising he should be reading basic information first, so he goes back to reading about Jaehyun.

                Jung Jaehyun…18 years old…Father’s name…Date of Birth…

 _Wait a minute,_ Taeyong stops, proceeding to flip and look at every page sprawled on his table. _Mother’s name…mother’s name—why is his mother’s name not printed out in any of these sheets?_

He calls Doyoung immediately, knowing he’s the only person who isn’t busy enough to mind being bothered and would need a call to distract himself from the job he loathes.

“Yes?” Doyoung asks and everything in Taeyong’s vision is slowly getting fuzzy.

“The records don’t have a slot for filling in the mother’s name or…?” Taeyong asks, his voice shaking enough for Doyoung to sit up straight.

_“They do…Taeyong are you alright?”_

“Yeah I’m fine just…” Taeyong manages to speak before his head begins to pound. He hears a door clank open which he guesses is Doyoung’s next patient.

 _“I’ll call you later,”_ he says and cuts the phone call.

Blood rushing into his hears suddenly deafens Taeyong as he tries reasoning out.

Why is his mothers name not printed in all reports? Surely, had she been deceased there’d be a name, or if unidentified, there’d be ‘-NA-’ printed neatly in the middle, Taeyong knows how it is. The slot couldn’t have been deleted from every possible record of Jung Jaehyun’s. It made no sense.

It made no fucking sense—Nothing made sense anymore.

 

 

 

Within a month of this new begotten ability—this seventh sense, Sicheng learns a deal about it. Moreover, he’s able to discover new abilities of those people around him right from the day Renjun came to him when he’d injured his leg while dancing and took the pain onto himself. Sicheng saw how red leaves turned green as Chenle was walking through the woods, how one day Yukhei came from summer camp and began freaking out about how wood turned black coal in his hands.

Sicheng jogs in the early mornings, he might hate daytime with the burning passion of a vampire, but he needs it. He’s counting backwards, spends most of his time in mastering it but mostly he prefers to quiet away in a corner.

Chang Xiao’s help made him discover another dimension of his ability—he could now get into people’s dreams. The day aspect of his seventh sense is outmatched by the night one.

He finds himself anticipating the night time because thats when he gets to get inside people's dreams. Sicheng finds out that he's a third person in dreams of others. He’s an observer, who goes by unnoticed, yet there to witness what goes on in other’s minds. He can make himself known but he choses to keep himself in the side lines and doesn't walk nearby anything that seems dangerous. He can't interact (he hasn’t tried to) with the Dreamers since they're always focused in their dream but he sees them.

He loves getting into people’s dreams, he loves the strange ominous and symbolic stories that unfold in their heads every night. Finally, he’s begun to like his seventh sense.

Sicheng spends every night paying a visit to very many dreamers and coming back to his own mind before dawn. He usually taps into the minds of those that live nearby, he can return to his own mind in a flash but now that he has conceived the idea of going into dreams of those that live overseas…he can’t stop thinking about the possibility.

It’s December 16th.

Sicheng closes his eyes around midnight and takes the plunge.

Before he realises it, his mind reaches South Korea—Seoul…

….a hospital…someone is sleeping…

…and Sicheng is gradually slipping into a deep end, he’s losing control…

He can’t help but get sucked into this vivid dream.

**Author's Note:**

> warnings will be edited for the next and final chapter and...i guess i don't have much to say except happy holidays! do leave a comment!  
> i'm @_taedragon_ on twitter, hmu ;)


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